November 26, 2013

Take Care of these 5 Financial To-Do’s for a Less Stressful Holiday Season

This guest post is brought to you by GoDaddy Online
Bookkeeping (formerly Outright) the simplest way to manage your
small business finances online. Sign up today for a less taxing holiday season!

Want to make a ton of money during this busy holiday season?
Then your preparation should start well before you sell your first item. One of
the first areas in your business you should get under control first is your
finances – if they’re in disarray, you’re going to make more mistakes and not
be able to pay total attention to making sales. Here are five financial to-dos
to take care of now.

1. Financial Tracking

Nobody wants
to take time out of their busy day while selling tons of items during the
holidays to balance their checkbook. Even simply tracking expenses and invoices
can be a huge pain when you’re swamped with a zillion orders and other tasks.

So the first
thing you should do before the holiday sales period hits is to track your money
with GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping. This automates your business’ finances so
you can safely run your business and not worry about things like running out of
cash when a big order comes in.

2. Automate Bills

Another
thing you really don’t want to worry about during holiday sales are your bills.
If you’ve got a thousand orders to fulfill and a mountain of emails waiting on
you, you really don’t want to wonder if you’ve paid the electricity bill.
Automate as many bills as you can, making sure to get the really important ones
like Internet and electricity so you can still operate your business without
interruption.

3. Go Digital

You don’t
want to deal with a ton of paperwork while you’re stuffing boxes and running to
the post office. Instead of working with actual, physical paper, start going
the digital route. This is a choice you can make for the rest of the year as
well.

Not only
does this get rid of clutter around your office and that closet you never go into
because you’re worried boxes of old papers might tumble down on you), going
digital with receipts and invoices can streamline your business. Suddenly you
can find everything you want with one simple search on your computer.

4. Pull Reports

Want to know
where your business really stands? You don’t really know until you pull some
reports like Profits & Loss, Expenses, and Best Customer. While it seems
like this might be pointless right now, knowing exactly how your company is
doing can make your holiday sales that much better. For example, if you know
who your best customers are, you can isolate what makes them so special and use
this info to make even more money during the holidays.

5. Get on Schedule

One of the
most important things to do with your finances before the crazy holiday sales
period comes is to get on a schedule. Do you have any sales tax payment deadlines
coming up? Any other big payments you needed to handle? Get everything on a
better schedule so you don’t forget anything important and cause yourself
needless stress. (The holidays will do enough of that for you!)

Naturally
this can help you with your business year round. You won’t even have to think
about it next year as you’ll be totally set before summer even ends. This
should free you up even more than before so you can concentrate solely on having
the most profitable holiday selling season ever.

What steps
did you take before the holiday season started to ensure a less stressful
holiday?